Power Pose Tonight!

Standard: Power Pose!  In addition to reading and reading and reading the passage/poem/excerpt tonight, be sure to power pose so that your confidence and testosterone are up.  That will help you present with enthusiasm, passion, confidence and authenticity in a comforting and captivating way.

Can't wait to see how you do tomorrow.  You will be successful or else you will be faking it until you make it!

Honors: After our parallel structure discussion and our anaphora reminder, we jumped back into our Pitts and Hiaasen articles.  Thank you to all of the students who demonstrated their honors class pedigree by watching the video, looking up the O'Reilly statistics and researching the nine names alluded to by Pitts.  We wrapped up the Pitts discussion and then brought in Hiaasen.  This time I had you think/discuss/write about these three prompts:

1. How does this article mesh with the Pitts article?

2. He ends with a sentiment similar to Pitts, yet he approaches it differently. Explain the differences between the two angles the men use.

3. Explain why each is suited for its author.

While we didn't get a chance to fully discuss the prompts we will do so tomorrow and then discover what I mean by "The Next Step".

Pitts and the Power Pose

Honors: What does it mean to have read and annotated an article for homework?  The expectation is that you have done what you need to do to fully comprehend the writing. We discovered today that no one actually did that.

To begin with, large chunks of people had not seen and did not watch the video that went along with the article.  Your comprehension of the writing would have been enhanced if you had done so.

Only one person took the time to see what "misleading statistics" Pitt was referencing. You could have offered more insightful discussion if you had.  

No one could identify all nine of the names Pitt alluded to in his writing.  His point would have been clarified and your input more valuable if you had.

Reading the article is okay.

Annotating the article is an improvement.

But to fully understand it and be ready to discuss the writing, sometimes a bit of additional work is needed.  I trust you'll do that work this evening.

Solid discussion today on the Leonard Pitts article.  I appreciate how many of you were calling into question his presentation.  We discussed how the bias you correctly pointed out in the article could be expected due to the opinion based nature of the article.  Again, all the more reason to consider author, purpose, evidence and source when reading nonfiction writing.

Once we got through that, we began discussing the construction of the article and why he made some of the choices he did.  For those of you who were not in class today, here are the seven questions you should be considering/responding to for class tomorrow.

1. What is Pitts' main idea in this article?

2. What does Bill O'Reilly represent in this article?

3. Explain the "moral squeeze" Pitts refers to in paragraph 7.

4. Identify a sentence from the article that connects to the quote from Jeremiah. Explain your selection and the connection.

5. Who are the nine?

6. What is his point when he mentions the nine names in paragraphs 13-15?

7. I don't like questions. He ends with three! Effective? Why or why not?

We will complete our analysis of the Pitts article tomorrow and then bring in the Hiaasen article.  

Standard: How will you apply Amy Cuddy's lesson to your life? That should be prominent in your mind this evening.  Where do you need to enhance your confidence?  

You'll get the chance to apply it starting tomorrow.  You will either succeed right out or you will fake it until you make it.  Start looking for a few pages to read, a poem to share, a passage to recite in front of the class.  You will do so with Cuddy's six key words:   enthusiasm, passion, confidence, authenticity in a comforting and captivating way.  

Can't wait.

ISTEP Practice Today

As the title says we had our ISTEP practice today.  Our REAL ISTEP experience will come the week of May 4--three short weeks.

Honors: Be sure to have printed, read and annotated the Pitts and Hiaasen articles. We'll look at them more closely tomorrow.

Standard: We'll finish our look at what Amy Cuddy has to say and discuss how it applies to us on a daily basis.

SHIMP, Cuddy, Hiaasen, Pitts and Barenaked Ladies

Lots of links today.  The top two are for the standard classes and the bottom three are for the honors classes.

If you are in the standard class, click on the S.H.I.M.P. link and read over the slides.  Be sure to complete either option one or option two in your writer's notebook.

After that, you should click on the Amy Cuddy link.  It's a short video that we weren't able to finish today.  We made it through 15 minutes of the 21 minute video.  Feel free to watch the first fifteen minutes if you were not in class today so that you are up to date in what we've been doing.

Tomorrow we are taking the ISTEP practice test.  Nothing to prepare for...just practice.

Tomorrow you should also be turning in your Defend Your Position papers.  I'll be collecting them before taking the ISTEP practice test.  

Click here for the S.H.I.M.P. presentation.

Click here for the Amy Cuddy video we started today.  


If you are in the honors class, then click on the link to the lyrics to "One Week" and see if you can identify all the allusions in the song.  Write them down and show me to see if you were able to identify them all.  Then write a couple sentences explaining why writers should use allusions in their writing.

We looked at the following quote...

-“...You foolish and senseless people, who have eyes, but do not see, who have ears, but do not hear.”

-Jeremiah 5:21

...and discussed its meaning.  

I then linked you to two articles, one by Leonard Pitts and one by Carl Hiaasen, both journalists with the Miami Herald.  I want you to read, print and annotate the articles for Wednesday's class.

Tomorrow we are also taking the ISTEP practice test.  Get a good rest and do your best tomorrow.

Click here for the lyrics to "One Week" by the Barenaked Ladies.

Click here for the Leonard Pitts article.

Click here for the Carl Hiaasen article.

Honors: I shared a very strong, student-written counterclaim and counter to the counterclaim from the Defend Your Position papers.  Those are due tomorrow.

We also listened to some nonfiction presentations.  Hopefully, we finish those tomorrow.

Standard: We shared and edited our Defend Your position drafts today.  We'll finish those tomorrow. I'll share a strong counterclaim and then we'll discuss the works cited page one more time.  Your final drafts will be due Tuesday after break.

Delay on the Paper

Honors: Well, I guess I shared some good news for many of you today.  Due to some citation errors I noticed in papers and miscommunications in class, I decided to extend the due date for the Defend Your Position paper to Thursday.  Hopefully, our discussion today clarified what is expected.

As a recap, you need to identify the sources you are using to establish their credibility and then cite the evidence that the sources shared.  Then you should offer a works cited at the end of the paper.

If you have questions, check out the OWL or ask me.

We started our nonfiction presentations today and while they have been pretty good, the biggest concern has been differentiating between the sources and the evidence.  The source is the person or the book or the journal.  The evidence is what is shared by the person, the book or the journal.

We'll continue with three or four more tomorrow.

Standard: We took a close look at a paper today to see what is working and what is not working so far.  You seem to be starting your paragraphs off with an argument, sharing evidence and unpacking the evidence well.  Don't forget to tie it back to the claim.

We also looked at identifying those sources and citing that evidence. We discussed the OWL and how to effectively and efficiently use it.

Tomorrow you should have a polished draft printed off and brought to class for peer sharing and editing.

Honors' Papers Due Tomorrow

Honors: Tomorrow you will be submitting your final drafts of the Defend your Position (Argument) papers.  Be sure they are polished, typed, double-spaced and a strong example of your best writing.

Be smart, and, prior to printing off the paper, look at the checklist/rubric I shared with you last week. To make it easier, here it is again.

You'll need a Works Cited page don't forget.  Yes, it should be on its own page.  Use the OWL if you have any formatting questions.  Follow the MLA format.

Our nonfiction presentations start tomorrow as well.  Bring your A game!  Reminder, if you are scheduled to present tomorrow, then your paper is due Wednesday.

Standard: You did some rough draft editing today in class.  Tonight work on improving what was edited for you today.  Can you honestly answer, "Yes" to every question from the checklist/rubric?  If not, go back and add that evidence, strengthen that intro, analyze more deeply.  Good writing takes hard work.   If you aren't working hard, you most likely aren't writing well.

I asked what you needed help on and it seems that constructing the Works Cited page and a little more editing time are needed. We'll look in to handling both of those along with another closer look at correctly identifying and citing your sources.

  

Defend Your Position Rubric and Conclusion Slides

Here is the link to the Defend Your Position Paper Rubric.

Here is the link for the conclusion slides.

Honors:  In addition to looking at those two links above, remember to have a complete polished draft in class on Monday.  We will edit it one last time and then turn it in on Tuesday.  work on that nonfiction presentation too. Those presentations start on Tuesday.

Standard: Check out the Defend Your Position link above and then have a complete draft in class on Monday.  You will need to have it printed so either do it at home, come in to my class before school or during lunch.  Desktop computers will be turned off at 12:00.

Enjoy the weekend.

Leads and Connotation

Honors and Standard: We read and discussed your leads today and a large majority of you felt that one of your new leads was better than your original one.  That's great!  Rewriting works again!  Keep at it.

We raced through a discussion on connotation today (here's the link to the slides) with the goal of demonstrating that the words you choose to explain your position go a long way towards convincing people of your position.  Look through your papers and see where you might add some connotated words to strengthen your paper.

So tonight you should be

• setting up your sources
• doing any additional necessary research
• unpacking your evidence
• selecting and rewriting your lead
• reconsidering your word choice
• keep reworking your paper

Honors also enjoyed 30 minutes of nonfiction presentation time.  I see some creativity floating around but remember, in the end, the big ideas come from the discussion of APES and bias.  Don't be so focused on the creativity of the presentation that the information suffers. 

Good luck!

Inserting Quotes and Writing Leads

Hey everyone, here is a link to the slides we looked at today.

Honors: Glad to see so many of you pleased with the rewrites you did last night.  I saw a lot of people unpack the evidence and explain it well.  More evidence was added.  Better arguments were made. Clarifying discussion were had.  Great work.

After looking at last night's work we focused on ways to insert quotes more effectively. We stressed the importance of identifying sources so that the reader grasps their credibility and the value of offering information to angle the evidence for the readers when using a quote.  We discussed the use of brackets and ellipses and pointed out strong verbs to use when sharing evidence because we know that not all evidence is created equally.  

Finally, five or six ways to start papers were discussed which then became the focus of the homework tonight. Even if you already have an intro written, I want you to use two of the approaches we discussed in class and come up with new introductions for your paper.  We will examine those tomorrow.

I also promised a solid 30 minutes to work on your nonfiction group presentations tomorrow as well.

Standard: We again duplicated much of the work going on in the honors class today.  I'd like to see you come into class with two new, unique introductions for sharing and discussing.  Can't wait to see the results.